Jonel Rienton's Blog

The Holiday season is almost over and so is my vacation days. I will go back to work tomorrow and it's business as usual. To recap my holiday vacation, I got quite a few toys added to my collections: my brother gave me a wireless keyboard and my beautiful girlfriend gave me an all-in-one printer which is pretty cool.

I have switched my brother's box with the one that used to host my dns, web, and ftp servers. I have rebuilt my old dual PIII box with 1.5G of ram and installed Debian 3.1 (Sarge) in it. I will probably designate this box as my new development box. So far I have installed all the things I need for building applications. The most recent dev app I've installed there is Mono's 1.1.3 installed from source. Moreover, I have just installed Postgresql's 8.0 RC2 in it. I've heard there's a lot of new goodies bundled with this release and I'd like to be one of the first to test this out, I've always enjoyed being in the bleeding edge when it comes to these softwares.

On a not so good note, I'm still struggling in installing Mono in my Solaris 10 x86 box. Even corresponded with one person in the list i frequent and he got the same ordeal. One day I'm gonna nail this and get it installed.

That's it for now.

Regards.

I have quite a few projects lined up for my domains FilipinosRUS.com and Road14.com. I'm planning to add additional features to the existing forum that we have on FilipinosRUS.com. Features like a friends network where people can hook up with their friends or families. People will also be able to post their photos with ease and share it with their loved ones. I'm also planning of providing free emails to my members with both domains. Also some file storage might be in the works. I'm still working on the planning stage so please bear with me as this would be a project that will be solely done by me.

I will also be working on some database framework for PHP that will work something like .Net's System.Data's namespace. I'm already excited on the stuff I will be implementing in the coming year. If you are interested in this project, drop me a note at webmaster at road14 dot com.

regards.

I have finally got the time to have MySQL running on my Solaris 10 box. MySQL 4.0.15 was included in the full install of Solaris 10, all I had to do was configure it and I was querying in no time. Installing MySQL was not really on my priority list but since Dreamweaver MX only supports MySQL and not Postgresql, I had to do it. I guess the experience will help me later on. It's a little late, well early morning and I have to type up some more code before going to bed.

Have a good one.

I have been a software developer using multiple languages like c# and java for quite a while now. The thing I like the most of these prominent languages is its Object-Oriented Design implementation. Both have great frameworks.

Recently, I have indulged myself with learning PHP. At first I was hesitant with it because it's a scripting language, an interpreted one I might add. But after picking on it with my OO hat on, I came to a conclusion that PHP 5 is a good language to learn because of it's OO implementation. Although it's not a strongly typed language, the OO part got me at hello.

In the process of learning PHP, I have stumbled upon Mojavi. From its defintion from it's website, what is mojavi?

Mojavi is an open-source MVC (model-view-controller) framework for PHP, licensed under the LGPL. Developing with Mojavi enables you to easily divide your web application into tiers, allowing for independent development.

I have played a bit with it and I must say that mojavi has its strenghts. The MVC implementation is so simple I was up and coding in an hour or so. If you guys are looking for ways to manage your web applications in an MVC design pattern, Mojavi is a must-experience.


regards.

Today people are still falling victims to viruses and worms spreading
through emails. A new email worm called "Zafi" is spreading in the
internet masked with the subject "Happy Holidays" with an attachment.
Guess what? People are still clicking on the attachment like they
haven't been told not to trust email from unknown sources or even from
people they know if the attachment looks suspicious. I think spreading
the information about viruses and worms should start with us, tell your
friends and families to be a little skeptical, maybe a little careful,
when it comes to attachments.

Moreover, if you use windows as your OS, make sure you're protected
with an updated anti-virus, a firewall, a spyware protection software
and I've been told you also need an ad-ware protection application too.
I highly suggest you use an alternative internet browser like Firefox.
If you think this is too much work, there are some other OS you can
use. You have the option of employing Linux, BSDs, or better yet,
Apple's Mac OS X. It's almost a year now since I switched to OS X and
I must say it's been really a good experience. I have always been a
*nix advocate, been using linux since the 2.0.x kernel, started out
with Redhat 5 and switched to Debian 2.0 (Hamm). I have also tried the
different derivatives of BSD's like FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD.
During those times, one thing these unices have in common was the rough
edges as far as the GUI is concerned, and when I found out that Mac OS
X's underlying platform was now based on BSD, I immediately made it a
goal to get a Mac and last year, about the same time of this year, I
got me an iBook and it had been nothing but a sweet, sweet ride.

If you have the option of buying a new computer, I highly suggests you
get yourself a Mac. I have already made one of my friends to buy one
and he's happy with it.

Happy Holidays!

I have just downloaded a copy of MacJournal 2.6 from here. The UI is pretty easy to navigate and it has the ability to post to LiveJournal and Blogger.com. I can also email my blog entry to anyone. The journal can be also exported to different formats like text, RTF, html and word formats. Another great product created for a great OS, Mac OS X, that is :)

A PHP advisory has been issued today. Click on the title above to read more.

I have moved my blog to my own server. I have also switched from using iBlog to Blogger.com as my tool for generating this blog.

Note:
Posted via email

Just like to post the Mac OS X 10.3.7 update is out. In case you haven't noticed :)
Click here for my screenshot

I've already seen one
thing that broke with this update, it's the process of mounting an smb
share which is actually an nfs mounted home directory.

The 10.3.7 Update delivers enhanced functionality and improved reliability for Mac OS X v10.3 "Panther" and is recommended for all users.

Key enhancements include:
improved AFP support for saving documents with long file names
improved OpenGL technology and updated ATI and NVIDIA graphics drivers
improved FireWire device compatibility
updated Preview application
improved compatibility for third party applications
previous standalone security updates

For detailed information on this Update, please visit this website: http://www.info.apple.com/kbnum/n300385
For detailed information on Security Updates, please visit this website: http://www.info.apple.com/kbnum/n61798

Note:
Posted via email

my pet project


I have just finished setting up FilipinosRUs.com website. For now, it's just a forum about events and stories about Filipinos.

A very good tool, not just for forums


I have recently deployed phpBB2 in my production box just to see how it works and while I was fiddling with it, I just realized that this tool can be used for data/information mining. Since the data are stored in a database like postgresql or mysql, or even mssql 7/2000, the point is, it can be queried easily and you can get results based on your search query. No more reinventing the wheel for those of you guys looking for a documentation solution. You can also apply some security on the forums so only authorized users can view your sensitive materials.

Give it a try... Open Source at work!

A good combination of language


I've always told my buddies that it's a good thing to know at least 5 computer languages because each of which will be suited for a particular task or job. I have been working with .Net's C# language for a quite a while now and I wanted to add to my arsenal the java language. I've picked java because of its web programming features. The more I dig into the documentation of java, the more I see where C# got most of its features and then some. I think this new venture will help me produce more mature and robust code.

Languages are just tools, what's important is the concept and logic that you learn from the different styles of programming.

Enjoy!

My experience with my first java app which runs on my macs and my windows notebook
using JBuilder 2005 (Foundation)


I have finally wrote my very first java app which does nothing really but my goal while doing it was to be able to code something on my Mac, bundle it, or jar the files together and send it to my windows notebook and see if it will run and as promised by saying 'Compile once, run anywhere', it went well.

I will try and send the jar file on my Solaris 10 box and see what the GUI will look like. By the way, the UI on my notebook was ugly, no offense but the application indeed looks like a non-native windows application, with all the sharp-edges, I must say. Maybe, the more I delve into the java world, I can find ways to make it pretty on both platforms.

JBuilder 2005 is a pretty good tool, I think it stands above Eclipse and Netbeans as far as desktop application development is concerned. I still prefer Netbeans for my web application development tho. I have installed JBuilder's Enterprise edition to see how it looks, one thing tho, have you checked out the pricing of JBuilder, they go through the roof: hundreds of dollars? Not even, we're talking about thousands...